Dilana Robichaux

Dilana Robichaux is a singer, songwriter, and performer who lives in Houston, Texas. She is best known as the runner-up contestant on the CBS reality television show Rock Star: Supernova.

Biography

Dilana Jansen VanVüren was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on August 10, 1972. Her surname changed to Smith when she was about two years old, when her mother married her step-father, and he adopted her. Robichaux used singing as an escape from an unpleasant home scene, participating in school choir competitions and festivals, as well as church choir.

When the opportunity presented itself, Robichaux dropped everything and started performing full time, from a traveling duo, to a mixture of bands in South Africa and Holland. Moving to the Netherlands, she formed her own band, focusing more on original works and becoming one of the country's highest paid acts.

Recording her first album Wonderfool led to four music videos, five singles and well over 200 gigs. She also sang the title tracks for two major motion pictures and performed in a festival in Belgium supporting Joe Cocker, K's Choice and Heather Nova to a crowd of more than 100,000 people.

Supernova

Dilana was one of the finalists on the CBS reality television show of season two of Rock Star, where she finished runner-up to Lukas Rossi. The show is a competition in which the band chooses a lead singer from a group of participants. Although Dilana received the most consistant praise for her performances of all the contestants, she came under heavy fire from fans, her competition, and from Supernova because of comments she made to the media, in which she was forthcoming with her low opinion of her competitors. Although she has apologized repeatedly for her remarks, it appears that her first Bottom Three appearance was a result of this controversy. The controversy seemed to die down by the end of the program - on the final night of voting, she was said to have received the highest number of votes at least at one point during the evening, and ended up with the second highest number overall. On November 17, 2006, Gilby Clarke revealed that Lukas Rossi defeated Dilana because "he made [their] music sound more like a band, whereas Dilana sounded like a singer, with Rock Star Supernova backing her."

Post Supernova

Dilana has since performed various venues with fellow Rockstar: Supernova finalist Magni Ásgeirsson, recorded a new version of her original "Supersoul," with the help of Gilby Clarke and former Acceptance band members and started an independent tour before touring with newly formed Rockstar supernova in January of 2007.

On November 28th, 2006, she released the singles "Supersoul" and her cover of The Police classic "Roxanne" on iTunes, Napster and other digital download websites. An album containing "Supersoul", "Roxanne" and other songs, co-written and produced by Gilby Clarke, will be due out in the mid winter of 2007. Dave Navarro is said to play on the CD as well. Dilana will also be featured on Black, a track on Gilby Clarke's upcoming solo album that will be released January 30, 2007.